The Melting World

Mirrors

At breakfast I told my husband about a study showing vegetarians
have high IQ’s and in the matter of a few sentences I had begun to talk
about cannibalism practiced among starving WWII Japanese soldiers
on a remote Pacific island. I am my mother’s daughter, I concluded when
he waved his hand as a roadblock to all things morbid, sad, unbelievable, yet true.

At the bus stop I see how the elm tree across the way spreads its branches
across the road, dancing its slow dance of balance and growth, reaching
for the intangible. Roots do the same underneath the grass, another world
of darkness where growth, as slow and as delicate, occurs in moments
whether we stand above, staring, or walk past, whistling.

If we are trees’ siblings, where are the roots? Did we lose them when born inside
porcelain, steel, and recycled air? The girl born outside today wears handprints
of her aunties on her skull forever. Her mind soars above the world
far from its dry cough and fever.

Maybe roots are invisible, like the red thread of destiny tying together those
meant to love, and maybe we drag them behind like entrails in each step.
We don’t care for them, we don’t see them, we never stand still. Our roots
capture bits of hair, lifeless ants, and candy wrappers, until we become burdened,
and we fall down before we understand a simpler way to grow.

Yet, then again, maybe my roots were never mine at all, but are my mother’s
and my grandmothers’ and my great-grandmothers’ and their mothers
and on and on. A seed sprouted from the heart of southern Africa where
First Mother sang. Words are then not mine to choose. Words began in the sigh
of hydrogen combining with oxygen, times two.

Whatever we utter connects us to dark and to light, burrowing
inside the roots we have a song kept safe, even as each word leaves.